Kairos Desperately Needs a Touch-Up

MechyFox#4212

I have 400 hours across TWH2 and TWH3, including Ku'gaths campaign, and I gotta say Kairos is the first campaign that I have no idea how to survive. Despite being a strong lord once leveled-up, Kairos is painfully weak as a faction, and it hurts his campaign. I've seen some people defend Kairos is in a good spot (probably because AI Kairos tends to dominate the southern Southlands and he is a very strong lord), but I want you to play a Hard/Very Hard campaign with him and come back after you've gotten his Short Victory. These are my main gripes with Kairos.


1) Lorewise, it is questionable that Tzeentch actually acknowledges Vilitch's existence, yet he has much more potential using Tzeentch faction mechanics in Immortal Empries than Kairos, Tzeentch's own freaking advisor.

Vilitch starts with all of his his Changing of the Ways abilities unlocked except for one, while Kairos needs to research virtually every single one of his Changing Ways while paying Grimoires to do so. Also, Vilitch's Changing Ways abilities are cheap enough to use from turn one onwards. Kairos' Changing requires prohibitively expensive grimoire costs for abilities that aren't even that good compared to Vilitch's. Giving Kairos Spawnify alone would give him a valuable tool to fight the factions around him.


2) Kairos' abilities are pathetic compared to the factions around him.

Yes, alone as a lord he is very strong, but with such an indefensible position in the Southern Chaos Wastes he cannot be everywhere at once, and his auxilary armies are not equipped to fight the factions around him. Teclis has access to many lores of magic just like Kairos, but his missile units and infantry are worlds better than anything Kairos could field at that same stage of the game. Slaanesh hard-counters Tzeentch units by being fast and high-damaging. Oxyotl can summon entire stacks of late-game monsters using the Rite of Primeval Glory, while Kairos' economy can barely afford an army or two of marauders and blue/pink horrors and maybe a couple of Screamers of Tzeentch. Half the time Kairos cannot even use his abilties because he needs so many grimoires just to perform actions like causing a rebellion, which never practically does any sort of value whatsoever. I really think lowering the cost of his Changing Ways or increasing the grimoires gained post-battle will make Changing Ways at least somewhat impactful for him for more than 1 turn for the entire early-game.


3) Relying on ambush stance is not a good game mechanic.

Yes, Kairos has very good ambush chances and teleport stance, but you cannot teleport on enemy armies every time you see a stack that is going to deal heavy losses to you, not to mention the AI does a really good job at staying just far enough to be out of teleport range. Using regular ambush stance is relying mostly on RNG and hoping the AI doesn't park an agent next to your army and foiling your ambush anyways. Using your own heroes to wound/assasinate theirs is also completely RNG based and could potentially lead to the loss of your hero during a critical failure, in which you most-likely have no buildings to recruit them back. He either needs the economy for more armies or stronger units. I would personally prefer more money for armies. Besides, one of his faction effects are literally -50% battle reinforcement time. This is literally useless for 80% of the game when Kairos can barely afford enough armies to get okay-ish defense over his starting territory.

I really like Kairos and Tzeentch in general, but I just find more suffering than fun in his campaign.

Traumtulpe#6946

I just played a campaign as Kairos on legendary/very hard, and I strongly disagree. Kairos has one rather crippling weakness - extremely bad replenishment - but other than that his faction is incredibly strong.
That's a level 1 lord (no items) versus a full health garrison. Clearly those elven units are not worlds better than a couple of blue horrors, quite the opposite in fact.

As far as changing of the ways is concerned, transfer settlement is the one you should be spending all grimoires on until you have a surplus. This ability alone is more powerful than everything a lot of factions can bring to the table. You mentioned having issues with the Slaneesh faction immediately to the east - have you considered not fighting them in the first place? I usually send my hero into their territory until I discover their port-settlement, take it via transfer settlement, trade it back and forth with them for their eastmost settlement for loads of cash and positive relations (they easily become military allies), then I keep the eastmost settlement (which is already T3) and immediately start the building chain to recruit iridescent horrors.

Kairos also has, quite contrary to what you describe, an amazing economy. A single province (like the one you start in) can easily net you 5-6k gold per turn. And teleport stance is just amazing if the enemy has more than one army, allowing you to 2 vs 1 them for crushing victories.

I'd advise you to try and play an actually bad faction, like the Vampire Coast. Blue horrors are miles better than any and all of their T1-3 units. They have less than 1/2 the income of Kairos. Pirate coves can't even begin to compare to changing of the ways, etc. Then come back and you'll appreciate how overwhemlmingly powerful of a faction Kairos really is (and you'll have learned a lot of tricks and mirco, because without it a weak faction like the VC can't even take a basic walled settlement).

ottakanawa#9312

Nah this is an example of personal bias I do great with Kairos

Darksteel83#1113

Traumtulpe#6946 said:

I just played a campaign as Kairos on legendary/very hard, and I strongly disagree. Kairos has one rather crippling weakness - extremely bad replenishment - but other than that his faction is incredibly strong.
That's a level 1 lord (no items) versus a full health garrison. Clearly those elven units are not worlds better than a couple of blue horrors, quite the opposite in fact.

As far as changing of the ways is concerned, transfer settlement is the one you should be spending all grimoires on until you have a surplus. This ability alone is more powerful than everything a lot of factions can bring to the table. You mentioned having issues with the Slaneesh faction immediately to the east - have you considered not fighting them in the first place? I usually send my hero into their territory until I discover their port-settlement, take it via transfer settlement, trade it back and forth with them for their eastmost settlement for loads of cash and positive relations (they easily become military allies), then I keep the eastmost settlement (which is already T3) and immediately start the building chain to recruit iridescent horrors.

Kairos also has, quite contrary to what you describe, an amazing economy. A single province (like the one you start in) can easily net you 5-6k gold per turn. And teleport stance is just amazing if the enemy has more than one army, allowing you to 2 vs 1 them for crushing victories.

I'd advise you to try and play an actually bad faction, like the Vampire Coast. Blue horrors are miles better than any and all of their T1-3 units. They have less than 1/2 the income of Kairos. Pirate coves can't even begin to compare to changing of the ways, etc. Then come back and you'll appreciate how overwhemlmingly powerful of a faction Kairos really is (and you'll have learned a lot of tricks and mirco, because without it a weak faction like the VC can't even take a basic walled settlement).

The trick with the hero and changing the correct settlement might be the key. I usually play on Hard/Hard and have fun then and a campaign not to hard for me. But with Kairos I had to quit my Hard/Hard IE campaign because I was really losing. I also had not good inspiration of how to succeed. I found his IE start very hard. I did not attack or anger the Slaneesh faction at all. But they attacked me.
My one ans only default RoC campaign finished was also with Kairos. I know how to use Kairos in a battle.

I think his research tree is pretty bad. Most research feels pretty useless. His replenishment is indeed a real issue.

He is really cool with mechanics like reveal faction intentions.

I think I am fine with him keeping a difficult start as challenging starts can be fun. But he needs some touches.

MechyFox#4212

Traumtulpe#6946 said:

I just played a campaign as Kairos on legendary/very hard, and I strongly disagree. Kairos has one rather crippling weakness - extremely bad replenishment - but other than that his faction is incredibly strong.
That's a level 1 lord (no items) versus a full health garrison. Clearly those elven units are not worlds better than a couple of blue horrors, quite the opposite in fact.

As far as changing of the ways is concerned, transfer settlement is the one you should be spending all grimoires on until you have a surplus. This ability alone is more powerful than everything a lot of factions can bring to the table. You mentioned having issues with the Slaneesh faction immediately to the east - have you considered not fighting them in the first place? I usually send my hero into their territory until I discover their port-settlement, take it via transfer settlement, trade it back and forth with them for their eastmost settlement for loads of cash and positive relations (they easily become military allies), then I keep the eastmost settlement (which is already T3) and immediately start the building chain to recruit iridescent horrors.

Kairos also has, quite contrary to what you describe, an amazing economy. A single province (like the one you start in) can easily net you 5-6k gold per turn. And teleport stance is just amazing if the enemy has more than one army, allowing you to 2 vs 1 them for crushing victories.

I'd advise you to try and play an actually bad faction, like the Vampire Coast. Blue horrors are miles better than any and all of their T1-3 units. They have less than 1/2 the income of Kairos. Pirate coves can't even begin to compare to changing of the ways, etc. Then come back and you'll appreciate how overwhemlmingly powerful of a faction Kairos really is (and you'll have learned a lot of tricks and mirco, because without it a weak faction like the VC can't even take a basic walled settlement).

You may have a point with the blue horrors and the economy. I've been playing Kairos a lot more and I finally see how you're supposed to blob with the horrors and lure the enemy into large spells, and I think the economy feels worse because he has such horribly defensible territory to start with.

However, it still feels like his start is unreasonably hard and bottlenecked into only one good strategy: get a NAP with Slaanesh ASAP, get a military access treaty with Tzeentch to your west, and zerg rush Oxyotl before he snowballs. If you fail to kill Oxy, restart. That sequence of turns seems like the only start where he doesn't get ganged by the factions he's surrounded by. I'd like to have more options for expansion but every other option seems way worse.

I'll keep the transfer settlement money trick in mind, though I still think Kairos should have almost all his Changing abilities like Vilitch does. Maybe change the techs that give the Changing abilities to something that makes them cheaper to activate?

Traumtulpe#6946

MechyFox#4212 said:

However, it still feels like his start is unreasonably hard and bottlenecked into only one good strategy: get a NAP with Slaanesh ASAP, get a military access treaty with Tzeentch to your west, and zerg rush Oxyotl before he snowballs. If you fail to kill Oxy, restart. That sequence of turns seems like the only start where he doesn't get ganged by the factions he's surrounded by. I'd like to have more options for expansion but every other option seems way worse.

I'll keep the transfer settlement money trick in mind, though I still think Kairos should have almost all his Changing abilities like Vilitch does. Maybe change the techs that give the Changing abilities to something that makes them cheaper to activate?

I'm currently getting close to turn 100, having conquered all of Lustria so far. This campaign I tried to vassalize a lot of factions, since Kairos really benefits from allied recruitment (and the mortal lords can buff units from other factions with their skills). I have about 10 vassals, and they really help out - Luther Harkon in particular is great at taking the enemies settlements after I smashed their main armies with a mass-teleport.

I started this campaign by vassalizing Sarthoreal on turn 2, then taking Teclis's main settlement from the sea, recruiting a lord there and using him to ambush teleport onto Teclis after which he was done for. I amassed vassals in that area with transfer settlement, to defend me from the lizardmen in the north, then took out the Slaanesh faction and Oxyotl.

I also thought an even better start might be to park an army at the main settlement of the Tzeench faction to the west (guarded by a vassal if possible), to ambush any armies Oxy sends over, and go up north with my main armies. So I really do think there are options available.

Changing of the ways is very cheap if you use it on looted, smashed up settlements, and if there is a lot of Tzeench corruption. If you can keep using it on cheap targets, you'll have enough grimoires to force wars upon any large factions that might pose a threat, which is also very powerful.

torak8988#3885

I took mods because abusing teleport stance got boring really quickly, the ability to teleport ambush on top of an enemy army is rather strong, giving you instantly the ability to focus down key enemy targets
Not sure how other people play him, but he's a little boring as you just fly around bombarding enemies with his armor piercing vortex, something unexpected of a faction themed around complex strategies, the shields look cool but are very simple and small, I hoped tzeentch would play completely uniquely due to his shields, but it turns out they're pretty boring

Traumtulpe#6946

torak8988#3885 said:

I hoped tzeentch would play completely uniquely due to his shields, but it turns out they're pretty boring

I find that Tzeentch really rewards good micro. Pulling units back once their shields are depleted and lining up devastating blue fire casts and flamer volleys is rather fun.

And I do like how teleport stance lets you auto resolve battles once you have half a dozen armies - wouldn't want to fight everything manually when trying to paint the map.

It's also great how well their casters work together with the army, they really play off each other. And I love how flamers can shoot over blue horrors, burning lords stuck in them without (much) friendly fire and busting blobs at gates in a siege.

Back when it was mostly demons the faction felt rather one dimensional, but now with some anti-large chosen (or the near indestructible shield variant) and the mortal lords I'm quite satisfied.